Realization

Disclaimer: no matter how much I ask Primus, he just won’t give me the deeds to Beast Wars, which means that Hasbro still owns Beast wars and all the characters within.

I glanced out the window at the street beyond.

It’s funny, I would have thought I’d be happy being home, and in a way I guess I am.

But when I left, I viewed life through the optics of a child; I only saw good in bots, and to my way of thinking, all bots had compassion, pity, a sense of justice.

That when it came to the crunch that they’d do the right thing, no matter who they were.

The last few years have changed that.

First there was Megatron. When Optimus first sounded the call to yellow alert and told us that we’d been charged with chasing down the renegade corvette Darkside, I’d actually been ignorant enough to think that we could talk them into surrendering.

Even after a few months of being on that planet, when I’d finally begun to realise with horror that I actually hated Megatron, life was still just black and white to me.

It took me a while, but I eventually learned that life itself was unfair. We didn’t need the Vok, or Quintessons, or the swarm to make life difficult, it just was by itself.

My mentor, my role model. Tigertron. At first I followed your every word adoringly, like a lost kitten. I would have travelled to the ends of the Earth for you, just to make you happy.

But even though life was always such a pleasure for you, even I could see the dissent in your spark.

Whether it was just one order too many that you didn’t like but followed anyway, or if you actually realised the same as I did that life could be so cruel, I guess I’ll never know.

Luckily you and Airazor were gone by the time that I fully realised it for myself.

How ironic; you two were taken hostage by the Vok, and yet that was what made me finally snap. You two didn’t deserve such a fate, yet that was what life dealt you anyway.

Even after that I still didn’t think that life was totally unfair. Sure, I hated that you were gone, but I found myself getting angry that it wasn’t a more deserving bot that suffered that fate.

I guess later that I realised that life isn’t picky about who it torments.

Take Depth-charge for instance. His hatred for X consumed him to the point that he was even madder than the crab was. Sure Rampage was a murderer, but I still hold the opinion that he was as sane as he could have been; I believe that he knew ‘exactly’ what he was doing, at all times.

Yet, for the actions of another, Depth-charge was the one that suffered. I never had a family in the sense that Optimus told me that he had one, but I still knew by that stage what it was like to lose someone close. I know that nothing in my life could ever compare to yours, but your desire for reprisal consumed you to the point where you had very little of your own mind left. I think that we could all see that look in your optics, that look that betrayed your sanity.

Funny, if you’d arrived earlier in the war, I probably would have done anything that I could have done to help you, to lessen the pain. I can still remember the way that I was back then; I could never be happy until I’d made all the others around me happy.

I guessed by that stage that I really just didn’t care.

They say that war changes you, but I’m not sure if that’s true. Sure, I emerged from the war a different bot to the one that had gone in, but I don’t know if it was the war specifically that opened my eyes, I think that it was what happened when we weren’t fighting; whilst we were fighting my mind was preoccupied, first with schemes to redeem Megatron, and later with dealing out my own vengeance.

No, I think that it was the times when I awoke early in the morning and had nothing better to do than just lye there and stare up at the panel lines in the ceiling, and reflect on who I was.

The fighting was easy compared to that.

It’s funny, I would have done everything for Optimus, I was the perfect bootlicker. I never realised until later just how condescending he was.

It wasn’t just him, they all were like that, but in my blind ignorance, I only ever took their comments at face value; I never heard the sarcasm behind those words, nor saw the way that they sneered when they spoke to me.

They say that ignorance is bliss, when in truth it’s just ignorance.

When we came back to Cybertron, I thought for a faint moment that I was wrong; justice had been served. Megatron was behind bars; we were all praised as heroes for stopping what we did.

But I soon began to realise how deathly right I was.

Mostly it was the beaurocrats; we’d been gone for so long that we’d been presumed dead. It wasn’t hard to get that rectified, but despite all that we’d done, we were still treated as just a lowly starship crew.

I’m not saying that I expected a medal or anything like that, but everywhere that we went the story was always the same, ‘sorry, you don’t have access, but could I get an autograph for my kids?’

Typical.

And now I look out the window of my apartment at the people below. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but to me, every one of them is another potential Megatron. Even if it is paranoia, I still don’t trust anyone any more.

“Hey kid, dinner's ready.”

I’d gotten into the bad habit of ignoring people; not even acknowledging them. Rattrap and I had been roommates for a while now, but it was a strained friendship. I knew perfectly well that he was there, but I showed no sign of recognition.

“Hey kid, ya hear me?”
Anyway, I had my headphones on. The fact that nothing was playing at the moment was immaterial; it still gave me an excuse to ignore him. Not that I needed one.

“I took one final glance out the window before returning my attention to the computer screen in front of me. It was so easy to just block everything out nowadays, to sink into whatever was written on the screen, and just forget that the world even existed.

Just to make sure that the illusion wasn’t ruined any; I activated my music player to blot out any further interference.

“Hey Chee…”